1) My understanding is that the firefox35 port was for those who wanted to run the java plugin which was broken in the mozilla-firefox port. Although I am not a huge fan of java, the US government makes use of the applets on the NOAA sites for moving weather maps (the rotation of systems follows the right-hand rule for high vs low pressure sytems in the Northern Hemisphere).
Is this correct and after a suitable period of testing will the firefox35 port be removed?
2) The JRE package with plugin is a long grind to install. There is work on the openjdk port. Is it a goal to get the icedtea-plugin working?
3) I have been looking at Current packages and was wondering if there is pattern to the binary builds in current. During the two month code freeze for a new release do binary builds continue or does one rely on ports? I'm considering installing current on an amd64 box but would like to do so after the recent commits I've seen in openports are built (numerous xfce4 upgrades, pdfmod added).

Is this correct and after a suitable period of testing will the firefox35 port be removed?

The OpenBSD project works on developers championing their chosen causes. Kurt Miller was the primary proponent of Java on OpenBSD, & did a lot of work to get the 1.4 - 1.7 JDK's to work. I read somewhere that Kurt has gotten busy on other things, & so some things are languishing until someone steps up & champions the cause again.

Quote:

There is work on the openjdk port. Is it a goal to get the icedtea-plugin working?

I have been looking at Current packages and was wondering if there is pattern to the binary builds in current.

Builds of selected(not all...) ports are done periodically throughout the development phase, yet there are times when the packages can lag behind snapshots. Sometimes resorting to building has to be done, but it isn't altogether frequent. It all depends upon where the project is at the moment when you need the packages, & what packages you use. This is a cost of running -current.

Quote:

During the two month code freeze for a new release do binary builds continue or does one rely on ports?

Perhaps others will chime in. I don't watch -current packages since I build what I need when I need it. The pattern I have fallen into is to build the system starting from a snapshot followed by building whatever ports I use. The windows I have for updating boxes is frequently very short, so I don't always have the luxury of waiting for new synchronized packages to arrive, but this is a personal choice. Your expectations, needs & usage patterns may be different from mine.

Snapshots tend to get built fairly often, they slow down occasionally, but for the most part it happens several times a month.

The following site is useful for keeping things in sync, packages aren't built at the same time usually.. but 90% of the time you won't have any problems, except when libraries in the base get bumped, when that happens it's not a big deal to keep the old packages installed temporarily, if a particular security vulnerability is important to you just build the port manually.

I run OpenBSD current using RAIC, a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers. Basically two computers, each with two harddisks.

When I feel like installing a new snapshot I overwrite the oldest snapshot installation, with a new one. If things don't work out, I always can fall back on the previous working snapshot. Nearly always I use the binary packages.

From this you can rather safely conclude that the Redwood ftp site has completed mirroring the packages. There are moments where this is not the case. You can imagine the problems if you install a mix of new and old packages from an incomplete mirror

__________________
You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump